Pro-Life physicians: Supreme Court’s decision on HB 2 is bad medicine

Following last week’s disastrous ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States on House Bill 2, the Pro-Life Omnibus Bill of the 2013 Legislative Session, a group of 4,000 Pro-Life physicians and reproductive health care professionals are voicing their stance as experts in the field on which the Court pontificated. The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists (AAPLOG) released an email statement calling the ruling on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt a decision that renders abortionists “immune from peer accountability and immune from state regulation,” which “minimizes the safety of women,” according to the physicians.

This politically motivated decision by the Supreme Court will drastically reduce the safety of abortions across the country, as now abortion clinics and abortionists will be accountable to no one for the conditions inside their walls. Surgical abortion carries all the risks of any other surgery, and offices which perform abortion should have to meet the same safety standards as those who perform any other comparable surgery. Medical abortion frequently leads to severe hemorrhage resulting in the need for emergency surgery and transfusions. Today’s Supreme Court ruling means that abortion clinics across the nation are now permitted to be incapable of responding to these known and predictable surgical emergencies.

Indeed, the initial passage of HB 2 through the Texas Legislature was based on the same rationale – that is, that women deserve the same protections as all other patients undergoing any risky surgical procedure in the state. Women, Pro-Life legislators insisted, should not become the collateral damage of the inhuman profiteering of Big Abortion.

AAPLOG acknowledged: “The people of Texas clearly wanted to protect women who undergo elective abortion from the Gosnell-type situations in which the woman’s life is put in jeopardy by substandard conditions.” “Gosnell-like conditions” refer to now-indicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who committed atrocities in his Philadelphia “House of Horrors” abortion- and pill mill for decades before conscientious city officials finally intervened on behalf of the women and children of his community. But Gosnell had already wreaked havoc on his customers. He was sentenced to consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for multiple counts of murder and malpractice.

Texas passed HB 2 to ensure that abortionists, who make a living from taking innocent lives, would never sink to the level of deregulation which Gosnell unscrupulously exploited in Philadelphia. But SCOTUS jeopardized that objective by obliterating crucial safety provisions of HB 2. “Those who promote elective abortion as a ‘medical’ procedure desire the status of medicine,” said AAPLOG, “without the responsibility of patient safety or accountability. This Supreme Court decision puts abortionists and their substandard practices above the law. This decision will effectively allow abortionists to practice without meeting basic safety requirements. If the Supreme Court really cared about women’s health, this was an exceedingly stupid decision.” [emphasis added]

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